LENIN COLLECTED WORKS.
maturn: here is the manifesto for you (a reworking of theses; we'll send it in printed form in a few days) from our C.C. on the war: do you want to print it in your language?? No? Well then adieu, we're not on the same path!
If Kollontai is on our side, let her help "push" this manifesto in other languages. Get acquainted with Höglund,¹⁰ young Swedish s.-d., leader of the "opposition," read him our manifesto (refer to me: we became acquainted in Copenhagen¹¹). Try to see whether there might be ideological closeness here (he is only naive, sentimental antimilitarist: these are precisely the people who must be told — either the slogan of civil war, or remain with the opportunists and chauvinists).
The whole crux of the task in Russia now — to organize ideological resistance to the opportunists of the International and to Kautsky. The whole point lies in this. Will Martov not defect here??... I'm afraid!..
I shake your hand firmly. Your Lenin.
1) Events in Petersburg — demonstrations that took place on the Vyborg side in the first days of mobilization in 1914, described by Shlyapnikov: "On the Eve of '17," Part I.
2) Kollontai A. M. before the imperialist war was connected with the Mensheviks. The internationalist position she assumed from the beginning of the war was therefore especially valuable in the eyes of Vladimir Ilyich.
3) Troelstra — leader of Dutch opportunists, member of the II International.
4) Gorter, Pannekoek, Wijnkoop — left Dutch Marxists; Wijnkoop subsequently became head of the Communist Party of Holland.
5) Roland-Holst — Dutch left social-democrat, subsequently communist.
6) Scoundrel. — villain.
7) This refers to Shlyapnikov's meetings with Troelstra in Stockholm on October 23/Nov. 5, 1914.
8) Central Committee.
9) Litvinov M. M. — now Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs.
10) Next to the word "Höglund" a note was made in the hand of N. K. Krupskaya: "Z. Höglund. Upplaudsgatan, 7".
11) Höglund — at that time one of the leaders of the Swedish left s.-d., subsequently one of the founders of the Swedish Communist Party.

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4.
Dear friend!
In a couple of days you will receive our Central Organ,⁸ and then, I hope, there will be complete "harmony" in our views. I frankly fear that some of your steps might be interpreted to mean that you are bypassing our legitimate representative at the International Socialist Bureau, Mr. Litvinoff. 76 High Street. Hampstead. London. N. W. Of course, such an interpretation would be a malicious distortion, but still be more careful.
Troelstra deceived or misled you. He is an arch-opportunist and agent of intrigues of the most vile center of the most vile opportunists — the German s.-d. (with Kautsky at the head, basely defending opportunists) and with their vilest Vorstand.³⁾ We will not go to any conferences, nor take any steps at the initiative of such scoundrels, but will stand apart: let them disgrace themselves! And they, having disgraced themselves once, will continue to do so. The French have already rejected their intrigues, and without the French only a dirty comedy of dirty villains is possible.
Larin, apparently, is shamelessly hoodwinking you.⁴⁾ If he expresses "confidence" in the German Vorstand, then I understand that Troelstra has "noted" this. And how!! Confidence in the vilest opportunists!! For God's sake, correct what can be corrected, and express not the slightest confidence, either directly or indirectly, to anyone among the opportunists, neither to the Germans nor to the French.⁵⁾ Pannekoek is right: the II International has definitively died. It was killed by opportunists and not by "parliamentarization" (as the awkward Pannekoek put it). "Papering over" disagreements is merely a petty intrigue, and we must not, directly or indirectly, take any part in it.
We will try to send you a couple of leaflets soon. Don't leave, be patient. Arrange everything I wrote to you about, wait until the Central Organ is in Russia, wait until we — with Russian comrades (including Kamenev⁶⁾ and others) — are completely in harmony, after they receive the C.O. Before all this is done, there's no point in thinking about your departure. Our move is premature for now. By the way, find out whether it's possible to print s.-d. materials in Sweden (like our C.O.).
Poor Gorky! What a pity that he disgraced himself by signing that vile scrap of paper from Russian liberals.⁶⁾ Meshkovsky rolled down to them, and Plekhanov and others (including Maslov and Smirnov).
Be sure to get and reread (or ask someone to translate for you) Kautsky's Weg zur Macht — what he wrote there about the revolution of our days!!
And now, how shamefully he has renounced it all!
Our task now — merciless war against chauvinism, cloaked in (talk about defending the "fatherland" etc.), especially with Plekhanov's, Guesde's, Kautsky's (the vilest of all, a hypocrite!) "socialist chauvinism" and Co. By upholding revolution (bourgeois in Russia and socialist in the West), we preach it even in wartime. Our slogan is civil war. All this — purest sophisms, that this slogan is inappropriate etc., etc. We cannot "make" it, but we preach it and work in this direction. In every country — first and foremost the struggle against the chauvinism of that given country, arousing hatred toward one's own government, calls (repeated, insistent, manifold, tireless) for solidarity of workers in warring countries, for their joint civil war against the bourgeoisie.
No one will undertake to vouch for when and to what extent this preaching will be justified in practice: that is not the point (only vile sophists renounce revolutionary agitation because of uncertainty about when revolution will come). The point is such a line of work. Only this work is socialist, not chauvinist. And it alone will bring socialist fruits, revolutionary fruits.